


Playing For Keeps

by hearden



Category: Heroes RPG
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teammates, F/F, POV Second Person, aka the one where rae and riley are soccer teammates in high school together :3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 21:38:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2556671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearden/pseuds/hearden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stutters when she's nervous; she's clumsy but somehow made the soccer team; Rae's generally an awkward kid by herself. That's just a known fact but add in having drop-dead-gorgeous Riley Hicks as her teammate? Well, Rae didn't know she could end up being even more of a bumbling dork. Fate can be cruel - or really, really, really kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing For Keeps

**Author's Note:**

> For my lovely friends over @ Heroes RPG (http://heroesrpg.tumblr.com).
> 
> Alyssa puts up with me writing Riley awkwardly. Which is awesome.

**2005** \- Rae: age 15; Riley: age 16.

It’s already hard enough that you have all of these honors classes, extracurricular clubs and society, _and_ soccer to take up every single day of your week - even your weekends are filled with hitting the gym and the books, sometimes at the same time although that causes a few headaches for you, so you think you should stop that. Finals are in three months, but you’re already super stressed because your PSAT scores came in the mail over the winter break and they weren’t as good as you would’ve liked them to be. Although, you supposed, great is better than good is better than failing. And, really, according to the score sheet, you did better than 98% of sophomores, so that’s alright. Not to mention, there was a little section on the back of the PSAT that wanted you to fill out some college stuff and now interest letters won’t stop flooding in from those colleges that rely on commercial advertising. You don’t see Columbia or Yale or Harvard doing any of that annoying shit, so obviously you throw all of the interest letters in the mail. A college being interested in you while you’re just a young sophomore is nice, but only if the source of interest isn’t automated interest letters that are only distinguished by what you call “lazy personalization”. If they were really interested, they’d point out everything that drew them to you. For example, they could have boosted your ego by praising how you juggle soccer, the Math and Science academy program at your school, honors classes (save for certain elective classes that don’t offer advanced placement options), and a Health Science club that frequently takes its members on trips to watch surgeries and conventions to learn more about the medical world - all without falling over from sleep deprivation or, perhaps, extreme exhaustion. Sometimes you wonder how you manage it as well. It’s not easy.

And to top it off, you’ve got that freaky thing going on with you. It’s like puberty but worse since puberty doesn’t make you think you’re crazy. You’ve always been afraid of the dark, yet here you are with complete control over it. Well, not complete since you’ve only got the slightest fucking clue on how to use it. But, hey, in time you might be like freaking Batwoman or something.

Oh, yeah, and you almost forgot the most important part: you like _girls_.

Initially, it had eaten you up (ha) from the inside last year when you were totally freaked out that the girls in the locker room during gym class were starting you draw your eyes. You felt perverted and wrong like you were some kind of Peeping Tom (would Tam be more appropriate?), but after having a scared and nervous talk with Vivian, she reassured you that - although it was hilarious as fuck to her - liking girls and looking at the merchandise wasn’t some felony punishable by law or something. It was still odd and awkward for you to go through - especially when the first girl you liked found out and picked a fight with you. You proudly gave her a black eye and got three days of suspension in return. Perfect attendance ruined, but oh well. That incident had blown over pretty quickly and nobody but you, Vivian, and that girl (and the girl’s family…) knew about the true reason why the fight had broken out.

It was probably a stupid idea to take soccer as well, but you couldn’t really resist the pull of your favorite sport. The locker rooms after practice aren’t that different from gym class last year except for the fact that you find girls in soccer uniforms ten times hotter than that unflattering gym uniform thing the school has under mandatory wear. Not to mention, soccer girls obviously get way more worked up than the chicks in gym class - all the kids in gym class do is walk around which technically counts as exercise so the coaches can’t really force them to do something else. You’ve been on both sides - soccer is definitely better by a long shot. But as if the sexual frustration isn’t enough (God, Vivian would laugh her ass off if she knew this is what you think on a daily basis), a bunch of the other sports that have last period or after school practices share the locker room with you guys. And, _damn_ , those tennis dresses got really short this year. You’re not even sure that’s in dress code.

You’re slipping into your regular shirt and tossing your jersey into your pack for the weekend laundry when the goalie taps you on the shoulder. You know her vaguely - well, you know everyone vaguely since there’s a name on the back of every jersey - but you’ve also heard her name a couple times since she’s in the same grade as Viv. “Hicks,” you address her like all the players do to each other - with surnames because that’s just how it works - and it doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone of you aren’t closer than surname basis, “Right?” She nods, a strand of blonde hair falling and plastering itself to her sweaty forehead. You kinda want to move it behind her ear but that’d be fucking awkward. You blame it on that pack of Airheads you had earlier - sugar always kinda gets you in that touchy mood. “Yeah, Edison,” she replies, and you try not to notice her lack of shirt but, hey, she’s taller than you so you have some sort of half-assed excuse, “I need a favor. D’ya mind?” You wonder what the favor is since in high school, it could be anything from borrowing a pencil to bumming a cigarette to helping a teammate pass a piss test. She continues, “I’ve got this… knot in my back and y’know.” Your mind chooses this moment to note that everybody else is gone, and there’s only you and her. Well, okay. “Um, y-yeah, sure.” You’re totally not ready for this.

She grins and nods like you just told her something awesome and grabs the shirt hanging off of her open locker door, using it as a makeshift pillow when she flops down on the bench between you two. You tear your eyes away from her ass - um - and fix your gaze on her back, although that isn’t any better than the previous option. “Where’s the knot?” She shrugs her shoulders for a moment, winces at the knot, and murmurs, “It’s… under my right shoulder blade.” Placing your hand on a spot under said shoulder blade, you listen to her instructions as she tells you if you’re warm or cool. Even without her instructions, you’re sure you would’ve found the knot easy enough. “Jeez, Hicks, you’re all wound up.” She chuckles, “Unwind me, then, Edison.” You’re glad she’s looking in the other direction because that got your thoughts racing and now you’re thinking about unwinding her - or her unwinding you since all of your studies and shit have got you pretty worked up. Fuck.

You manage to ease up the knot in her back, anyway, despite wanting to run your hands all over her smooth skin, and once it gets to the part where you can’t really work it out anymore, you just tell her to run some water over it at home. But, you couldn’t even remember a few minutes after if you told her to run hot or cold water because right after you fixed most of her ache, she smiles at you and says “Thanks” with that Southern accent that’s present in every sentence and you think your knees might have lost some tissue and were about to collapse.

You’re heading out of the locker room and walking across the student parking lot - because that’s the only way to get on the sidewalk that leads to home - when a honk catches your attention. Mostly everyone’s gone so there’s no one anybody should actually be honking at. Glancing around the lot to see what’s going on, you finally see her, sitting in the driver seat of pretty old-looking muscle car (you’re not even sure if it’s a muscle car - you’re not the car type of person) and waving at you. Your knees do that weird thing again; it takes a moment before you’re able to walk over to her car without feeling like you’ll fall and get a mouthful of cement. “Long time no see.” you joke when you get to her pulled-down window. Lame. She gives a short chuckle and nods at your backpack on one shoulder and your soccer gear on the other, “You can’t be carryin’ that all th’ way home, darlin’.” The way she calls you darling makes your body tingle and you start to wonder if this is still from the sugar you had earlier. She looks you up and down again, and you kinda hope that she’s subtly checking you out but that’s probably stupid. Then, she unlocks the doors and tells you to get in. It seems like today’s your fucking lucky day, huh?

-

It continues for weeks after that, and suddenly you’re friends with Riley Hicks, goalie of the soccer team. Sure, you’re friends with everyone else on the team as well, but you think you get along with Riley better. She’s a junior which doesn’t give you much in the classes category, but a few days after the whole massage-then-she-drove-you-home-Jesus-Christ thing, you find her sitting with a couple of friends out in the courtyard during your lunch period. Then, your schedule changes to fit hers without you noticing. It’s like a one-time thing that turns into routine because you’re too oblivious to see it happening until it’s already long developed. You stop sitting with Vivian (which is kinda good anyway since the friends she sit with don’t really like you and think you’re some soccer dyke - of course, they always say this shit when Viv isn’t around, but you don’t want her to get trouble just because some assholes get homophobic so you stay as quiet as a mouse) and sit with Riley’s friends instead. Your nights of studying are sometimes interrupted when Riley calls you up and tells you to get your nose away from that textbook - you think it’s a bit sad that she knows you’re always reading a textbook - then you two talk for a few hours and you hate it when the call has to end. Your performance in the team gets better, even though you were already pretty fucking good. When Coach splits the team in half during practices, you always make sure that you’re on Riley’s side, and it shows how great the two of you are together - on the field, of course. The change is gradual; you slip into it easily like it’s the only routine you’ve ever known, and then a thought occurs to you.

You like Riley Hicks.

_Shit_.

-

Your high school’s soccer team is actually pretty damn good. The school’s soccer teams - both boys’ and girls’ - do ten times better than the rest of the sports teams every year (especially the football team - they kinda fucking suck). Every year, the soccer team makes it to the championship game of the district - sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But you know this year that the team’s gonna win - this year’s got more freshmen and sophomores on the team than juniors and seniors, but that doesn’t mean the lowerclassmen can’t kick ass. You all have destroyed team after team, running most - if not all - into the ground, and everyone’s positive that the trophy’s gonna be sitting in the school’s trophy case by the end of the week. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

You kinda wish you hadn’t thought that because something does go wrong, although it has nothing to do with the game. The game itself is won by a huge margin of points with the confidence of the whole team boosted by hundreds for the rest of the school year. What goes wrong is the after party that the captain of the team - Benton - throws at her house. Riley picks you up, and you two spend the drive in silence until you ask something that’s been bothering you ever since the season started.

"Hey, Riley? I’ve got a question."

"Shoot."

"Um, so, since you’re goalie, during practices and games… do you notice anything about some of the players?"

"My eye’s mostly on th’ ball, Rae."

"Yeah, I get that. But, like, when we’ve got the ball all the way on the other side and you get a couple minutes of just standing there. Do you… see anything? Like, anything unusual?"

"What’re you gettin’ at?"

"Um… Benton and Thakkar. Do you see what they’re doing?"

There’s a moment of quiet as Riley halts at a red light and sighs.

"What about ‘em and what they’re doin’?"

You remember how you first noticed while on the bench for the first game of the season because you were just the new kid on the team. You saw everything from that bench - everything including how every time Benton passed the ball to someone else, she’d stumble a bit to the side and Thakkar would make a little motion to help her up. There was no actual contact between them, but you could see that something passed between them in the empty space. And, during practices, they’d be on opposite teams, always struggling to snatch the ball from the other. Practices like those normally ended up in them tripping and falling all over each other - now, you think that all of it was on purpose. And, come to think of it, Benton and Thakkar have lockers in the last row, near the showers and furthest from the entrance, and they’re the only ones with lockers in the last row. Dang.

"What exactly are they doing, Riley?"

She avoids looking at you, focused on the road, “They’re dating. Is that a problem?”

Dammit, now she probably thinks you’re a homophobe. “N-no, I just…”

She raises an eyebrow, “You what?”

"I-I was wondering if it was… y’know, okay."

"If what’s okay? Being queer or dating a teammate?"

You shrug, not sure which one scares you more. A glance out the window shows that you’ve arrived in Benton’s house, and you shift in your seat, suddenly not wanting to attend the party after all. You just want to go home, now, and lock yourself in your room for a long while.

"…Rae?"

"I-I wanna go home." You don’t turn to look at her but imagine that Riley nods at your choice and makes a decision of her own because in the next moment, the car lurches back to life and she pulls out of her parking space.

"Don’t worry, darlin’. I’ll take you home."

She drops you off right in front of the apartment complex where you live on the penthouse level with your aunt and uncle. You should be going. You should just get out and tell her goodnight and that you’ll see her on Monday at school. But you don’t. Tonight, you feel a little brave after the talk earlier - she’s obviously okay with Benton and Thakkar’s relationship and you just want to know if you should act on your feelings or throw them away - so you flat-out ask her. “Riley, are you, y’know, queer?”

"I don’t really use labels."

"Okay."

"Are _you_? Because, y’know, it’s fine if you are.”

"I know. I know it’s fine. And, yeah, I am, I guess."

“You guess?”

"I’m… I dunno. Confused."

"Hey, Rae, look at me." You’re forced to look at her when you feel her hand on your arm; it feels right but then wrong, and you want to flinch away but you also want to get closer until her arms are around you, warm and comforting. "I’m here if you need t’ talk, okay?"

You nod - mutter an “Yeah, alright” - and make the mistake of glancing down at her lips. Wow, um, how are you ever going to talk yourself out of that one? Maybe, she notices; maybe, she doesn’t notice. Either way, she probably noticed after you - genius as you are - speak up with the _right_ choice of words.

"Can I, um, can I kiss you - right now? Would that, would it be weird?"

You smile a tiny bit as she laughs but never breaks eye contact; maybe, she’s laughing at how dumb you just sounded, but hell, it’s okay because Riley’s laugh lights up a whole freaking city. Boldly, you take her hand that was still lingering on your arm and hold it, your fingers easily linking around hers. “I-I’m serious, Riley,” you say, stopping her right in her tracks, her laughter dying out quickly as if someone was draining the life from the atmosphere. Her next words are so Hallmark-dramatic, so _good_ that you feel like this one moment could’ve gotten you both Oscars.

"I know."

And then, just like that, she’s closing the space between the two of you, guiding your hands to wrap around her neck, her own hands resting on your cheeks. She’s showing you how to kiss, chuckling when you apologizing for bumping noses with her and murmuring that it’s perfectly fine; the peck she gives you on the cheek makes your heart flutter. Maybe, you’ll die tonight of cardiac arrest or, just simply, love.


End file.
